No. 1. Falling asleep "like Spock"
The famous radical way to deal with a child who does not want to fall asleep.“The treatment is very simple: put the child to bed at the appropriate time, say good night in a gentle voice, leave the room and do not return. Most children scream angrily for 20-30 minutes on the first night, and then, seeing that nothing is happening, they suddenly fall asleep. The next day they'll only cry for 10 minutes, and by the third day they usually won't cry at all."
Modern psychologist, specialist in child-parent relationships Lyudmila Petranovskaya in the book “Secret Support. Attachment in a Child's Life" criticizes the idea of leaving children alone. She reminds that in many traditional cultures Babies spend the entire first year of life clinging to their mother. According to Petranovskaya, if the fears about “being spoiled, getting used to it” were true, then children almost until adulthood would insist on being carried in their arms: “However, observations say exactly the opposite: these kids are much more independent and independent by two years than their urban peers.”
No. 2. Avoiding night feedings
Spock's recommendation to abandon night feeding if the child weighs at least 4.5 kg is also questionable.“If the baby is a month old and weighs about 4.5 kg, but is still waking up for night feedings, I think it would be wiser not to rush to him with milk. ... Generally speaking, a baby weighing about 4.5 kg and feeding normally during the day , does not require night feeding.”
Today, doctors are convinced that night feedings should not be stopped so early: they stimulate the production of the hormone prolactin, which is responsible for the formation of breast milk. It is important to maintain night feedings as long as your baby needs them. The World Health Organization also recommends feeding on demand - that is, as often as the child wants, both day and night.
No. 3. Ignoring crying
If a child is fussy or crying, “like Spock,” there is no need to react to it: “Some children vomit easily when they are excited. This frightens the mother, she looks at the child with an anxious look, hurries to clean up after him, tries to be more considerate towards him and next time immediately runs to him as soon as he screams... If the mother decided to teach him to fall asleep without screaming and rocking, then she should not deviate from the intended plan and not enter into the child’s presence.” However, the results of a recent study conducted by American scientists indicate that a mother can boldly, without fear of anything, follow her maternal instinct. The more “hugs” and “hands”, the more tactile contact, the more mother’s attention and care, the more successful, self-confident, kind, sensitive, mentally and physically healthy person your child will become when he grows up. The researchers came to these conclusions by analyzing data on childhood and adult life more than 600 people.No. 4. Sleeping on your stomach
“It is advisable to teach your child to sleep on his stomach from birth if he doesn’t mind. Later, when he learns to roll over, he will be able to change the position himself if he wants.”In the 21st century, pediatricians say that a child should sleep exclusively on his back and on a hard mattress. Sleeping on a baby's stomach is dangerous: it is a risk factor for sudden infant death syndrome.
No. 5. Orange juice as a first complementary food “Doctors usually advise introducing orange juice into a child’s diet at the age of several months,” says the book “Baby and Child Care.” “You can squeeze the juice out of oranges yourself or use canned juice... Usually, until 5-6 months, children drink juice from a pacifier, and then from a cup.”
In 2017, the American Academy of Pediatrics released new recommendations for children's consumption of fruit juices, according to which juices should not be present in the diet of children under one year of age. According to the authors of the recommendations, juice does not provide any special nutritional value for young children, while it contains a lot of sugar and is completely devoid of fiber. It is better to give babies under one year of age real fruits, baked or pureed. In this case, the child will receive all the necessary vitamins and microelements, as well as fiber, but will not get used to sweets.
No. 6. Meat feeding from 2 months
“Research has shown that meat is very beneficial for children even in the first year of life,” writes Dr. Spock. – Many doctors now recommend giving meat starting from 2-6 months. Meat for small child or grind it in a meat grinder several times, or rub it through a sieve, or grate it with tinder. Therefore, it is easy for a child to eat it, even while he has no teeth.”No. 7. Too big undershirts
Two months is definitely too much early age to start complementary feeding - especially meat. Pediatrician Evgeny Komarovsky recommends starting meat feeding no earlier than 8-9 months.You can read the following about clothes for a newborn in Benjamin Spock’s bestseller: “Nightgowns. You will need from 3 to 6 shirts. Buy immediately the size for the age of 1 year. Baby vests. You will need 3-6 vests in size 1 year.”
A newborn, of course, grows very quickly, but clothes that are not the right size will cause both the baby and the mother complete inconvenience.
“Remember that you know your child well, but I don’t know him at all.” Many of the tips from the book “Child and Child Care” are naive and even dangerous for modern realities. However, Spock was the first pediatrician to contradict the generally accepted view that raising a child should primarily develop discipline. His ideas were revolutionary for his time and influenced many generations of parents, making them more gentle and sensitive to their children.
In the preface to his famous book, Benjamin Spock emphasizes that everything that is written in the book should not be taken too literally.
“There are no similar children, just as there are no similar parents. Diseases progress differently in children; Educational problems take different forms in different families. All I could do was describe only the most general cases. Remember that you know your child well, but I don’t know him at all.”
Benjamin Spock, "The Child and Its Care"
On July 14, 1946, Benjamin Spock's book, Common Sense Child Care, appeared on the shelves of American bookstores. At the dawn of the third millennium, there is hardly a mother who does not know that the child should not be swaddled tightly and does not have to be fed according to a schedule. But in the middle of the 20th century, these “strange” advice from Dr. Spock became a real sensation...
“Child Care in the Spirit of Common Sense” was the name of the book that excited the whole world, and in the United States it took second place in popularity after the Bible and became a reference book for young parents. Over the course of 55 years, “The Child…” has gone through six reprints, been translated into 42 languages, including Urdu (Iran and part of Afghanistan), Thai (Thailand) and Tamil (Sri Lanka), and the total circulation of the book has already exceeded 50 million copies.
The future adviser to all young parents was born in 1903 in New Haven (Connecticut, USA) into the family of a successful lawyer. Spock, a corruption of the Dutch Spaak, is the family name of a family of settlers who settled in the Hudson River Valley. Benjamin's mother Mildred Louise, a strict and domineering woman, accustomed to hiding her feelings, was the embodiment of Puritanism. Dr. John Watson was then considered one of the main authorities on “children’s issues” in America. “Never, never kiss your child,” he strictly punished young parents in the book “Psychological Education of Infants and Children.” Mildred Louise appears to have been a diligent student of Watson's.
Spock pioneered the use of psychoanalysis to understand the needs of children
In addition, the pedagogical arsenal of parents of that time, in the words of the Boston Globe newspaper, consisted of “hard-boiled manuals, judgments inherited from the Victorian era, teachings from grandmothers and well-meaning, but not always competent, advice from neighbors, mothers-in-law and mothers-in-law.” As a sign of protest against the methods of education practiced, in particular, in his family, after leaving his childhood, Benjamin Spock wrote his book.
For most American dads and moms, the new “allowance” seemed to open a window from a stuffy room into a world of smells and colors. Even Mildred Louise, having read her son’s essay, said: “Well, Benny, in my opinion, is very good.” And young mothers read “Child” as a bestseller. “I have a feeling,” one of the readers admitted in a letter to the author, “as if you are talking to me, and most importantly, you consider me a rational being...”
The eldest of six children in the family, Benjamin had to fully learn what a nanny's worries were. “How many diapers have I changed, how many bottles with nipples have I brought!” — he talked about his own childhood. Not surprisingly, Spock sympathized with mothers. And having found himself in the war as a psychiatrist, he was shocked by how cynically she reduced all parental efforts to nothing.
Up to 40 million children born in the 1950s and 1960s were raised “according to Spock.”
In 1943, he began a book on child care "in the spirit of common sense": "Some young parents feel that they must forego all pleasures simply on principle rather than on practical grounds. But too much self-sacrifice will not benefit either you or the child. If parents are too busy only with their child, constantly worrying only about him, they become uninteresting to others and even to each other...”
Common sense should be the basis children's education, Dr. Spock stated: “If a child cries, comfort or feed him, even if the feeding schedule is disrupted. But there is no need to rush headlong to the baby as soon as he whines. If a child cannot or does not want to do something, do not force him...”
Admirers of Benjamin Spock argue that Baby and Child Care, written during the presidency of Franklin Roosevelt, reflected the common sense of Roosevelt's New Deal, which helped America not only survive the difficult trials of the 20th century, but also become the strongest power in the world . Opponents of Spock-style education believed that it shook the Christian foundations of society: “The Bible teaches that man is inherently depraved. Everyone bears the curse of original sin. Spock abandoned the Christian paradigm. The doctor’s upbringing methods were based on allowing the child as much as possible.”
Benjamin Spock himself said that he tried to bring to life the ideas of two major thinkers of the early 20th century - the founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, as well as the American philosopher and educator John Dewey, who believed that “it is not at all necessary to drive children into adulthood with the help of disciplinary methods - they may well become adults of their own free will.” Children raised according to the advice of Dr. Spock demonstrated their character already in the 60s by protesting against the Vietnam War. And the doctor himself, from the very first days of the war, began to oppose it. This threatened serious trouble for a respectable physician, but he deliberately took the risk: “There is no point in raising children and then letting them burn alive.” In 1968, Benjamin Spock was found guilty of criminally aiding young men to evade conscription into the United States Armed Forces. The doctor was threatened with two years in prison, but the appeal court overturned the sentence.
In the USSR, Spock's book was published in 1956 and created a real revolution.
In general, maternal upbringing affected the “adult life” of Dr. Spock. “I never kissed my sons,” he said. And the children apparently suffered a lot. The youngest, John, admitted that he felt abandoned. The eldest, Michael, was also not delighted with his father’s pedagogy: “Our Ben always thought in extreme categories. Everything with him was either only bad or only good... And if I did something wrong, I could always fully feel how disapproving my father was of my action.”
The doctor did not have a good relationship with the mother of his children, Jane. According to people close to the Spock family, she was his first assistant in preparing the book, but she always felt underappreciated. Spiritual discomfort resulted in Jane's alcoholism, which completely destroyed the marriage. In 1975, the couple divorced, and soon Mary Morgan, a woman 40 years younger than him, became Spock's companion.
A terrible blow occurred in 1983, when Spock's grandson Peter committed suicide at the age of 22, and all family members felt as if the doctor blamed them for not paying attention to the depression that pushed the guy to take a disastrous step. How Benjamin Spock experienced what happened can be judged by his words: “We need to push work, career into the background, so that business does not come first for us, so that it does not take up so much time, depriving us of the opportunity to communicate with our family...”
Dr. Spock ran for President of the United States in 1972
Benjamin Spock died at his home in San Diego, having shortly before his death suffered a heart attack, stroke and six severe pneumonias. They offered him hospitalization, but Mary, knowing that her husband would not live outside the home for even two weeks, did not agree to this. Home health bills reached $16,000 a month. Considering that the family's annual budget was about 100 thousand dollars, it was not possible to pay such bills. Therefore, Mary Morgan turned to friends and acquaintances for help. When the press reported this, letters and money orders were sent to Benjamin Spock.
“I hate the atmosphere of official funerals with all my heart,” the doctor wrote in his memoirs, Spock on Spock. “I hate a darkened room, people with long faces, silent, whispering or sniffling, assistant managers unsuccessfully trying to portray grief... My ideal is a Negro funeral in the spirit of New Orleans, when friends walk, dancing, like a snake to the sounds of a jazz band.”
Dr. Benjamin Spock is called a reformer. In 1946, an American pediatrician published the book “The Child and His Care,” which became a bestseller and changed the way parents think about raising children. Spock's methods are still debated. So what is their essence and why do mothers from all over the world love the books of the American doctor so much?
Spock's Basic Principles
“A child is not a blueprint for a person” - this is the statement that underlies Benjamin Spock’s parenting methods. He always tried to convey a simple idea to parents: every child is an individual whose opinion must be respected, which is why the doctor first of all calls not to punish children, but to negotiate with them.
“The moment you let a child know that he is the most exceptional baby in the world, it nourishes his spirit in the same way that milk nourishes his body,” says the doctor.
In other words, love is the basis of the entire educational process, and you need to constantly demonstrate this to your child.
Children under the age of three months, on the advice of Dr. Spock, should be picked up more often - lulled, caressed, often swaddled. Today, this position is disputed by many psychologists, but the American pediatrician was sure: the baby will grow up obedient only if he physically feels close to his parents during this period of development.
When a child turns three months old, his psyche changes. According to Spock, at this age the baby should begin to be taught to be independent - left alone in the crib, taught to fall asleep without his parents, fed not according to the clock, but when the child asks for food. At the same time, it is very important to be able to distinguish the desires and needs of children from their whims. According to Spock, desires should be respected and satisfied, and whims should be ignored. “I want to play” is a desire, “I want to play with the same exact doll as the girl next door, so buy it for me” - this is already a whim.
Spock is also sure that children should not be forbidden too much. If a child scatters buttons around the house, then he is probably creating some kind of fairy-tale world out of them, and preventing this will hinder the development of the child’s fantasy and imagination. Only things that are truly dangerous should be prohibited: running across the road at a red light, coming close to a fire, watching scary movies before bed. If you surround a child entirely with prohibitions, then, as he grows up, he will continue to prohibit himself from many things, and this will negatively affect the development of the child’s personality.
The most difficult age, according to Spock, begins in a child at three years old - it is during this period that the child begins to show negative character traits, including stubbornness.
How to calm a child if he is crying?
Critics of the Spock theory condemned the American doctor for allegedly teaching parents not to pay attention to children's tears. In fact, Spock has developed a whole system of advice on how to calm a child when the cause of tears is whims and stubbornness, and not needs, but at the same time do this in such a way that the comments do not look like prohibitions.
Here are just a few of the options suggested by the doctor.
Come up with an important matter for which it is worth putting off crying: “Let’s cry later, otherwise it will soon get dark and we won’t have time to go to the store.”
Suggest crying quietly so as not to wake up dad, grandma or even the cat.
Try to distract the child from and, not paying attention to the tears, offer to drink tea or watch the leaves bloom on the trees. Another good way is to switch the baby’s attention to something else: “Your eyelash has fallen out, let’s remove it, otherwise it’s stopping you from crying.”
Say out loud the problem that is causing the child to cry: “I understand that you are upset because we didn’t buy you a car, but we can’t buy it now.”
Offer a cure for bad mood. Such medicine can be any tasty little thing - marmalade, cookies. The main thing is that the child understands: if the medicine does not help, they will not give it to him anymore, then he will be forced to play along and calm down.
Benjamin Spock's development methods
In addition to the principles of education, Dr. Spock also developed several methods for child development. Here are some games suggested by Spock. By the way, they are actively used in many development centers.
Development of visual memory
Invite your child to draw with him. Draw a yard, a house, a cat on the window, smoke from a chimney, a dog in a kennel, and then invite your child to repeat the drawing. It is important that he remembers and displays as many details as possible - the dog, the smoke, and the cat. If he doesn’t succeed, then look for mistakes together and then complete the picture.
Development of auditory memory
Constantly invite your child to guess what sound was heard next to him: mom slammed the oven or refrigerator door, mom turned on the hair dryer or mixer. In this way, the child will learn to listen carefully to surrounding sounds, concentrate on them, and will better perceive sound information.
Speech development
To develop a child's speech, Spock offers the simplest method - simply talk to the baby more often. The richer and more eloquent the parents’ speech, the better the child will speak.
In the presence of the baby, mom and dad should comment out loud on all their actions: “Now we will peel the potatoes, boil them, make mashed potatoes from them, now we take the first potato - beautiful, round.” From the outside it may look strange, but in this way the child remembers everything that the parents say.
Development of tactile memory
Development fine motor skills– deposit proper development child. At least, that’s what Dr. Spock thought and suggested a very simple game: you need to hide all sorts of small objects in a bowl of cereal and invite the baby to look for them and guess them without taking them out. At this moment, the mother can cook something and go about her business in the kitchen, while the child will be busy, enthusiastic, and at the same time will train fine motor skills.
Good speech visual memory, the ability to quickly perceive information by ear - these are the main qualities that need to be developed in a child, according to the doctor. At the same time, show love, but do not limit the baby’s independence and do not surround him with prohibitions. All this will help to avoid problems with raising a child. After conducting his own research, Spock noticed that obedient children get sick less often than naughty ones, and they become naughty because they lack love and attention.
Yulia Shershakova
“What, what,” you ask, “calmly clean up the vomit and leave the room?” Today, many pediatricians consider the principles of education of the reformer Benjamin Spock not only controversial, but also partly harmful, although some 50–60 years ago, according to the book "Child and child care" both our parents and ourselves were raised. And even though Spock’s method of parenting is still debated to this day, young mothers in different parts of the world enthusiastically read and absorb every word of the famous pediatrician.
Indeed, every parenting principle recommended by Dr. Spock helps avoid the eternal battles between parents and children and helps young mothers believe in their own strength. “In fact, parents know more than they think, and this knowledge is in itself a good foundation for education. The main thing is not to forget about it,” Spock said. And this pediatrician’s legacy to young parents can rightfully be called the main idea of his method of education.
"So simple!" will talk about the main ideas of Dr. Benjamin Spock and try to figure out whether modern claims to the theory of education of the eminent pediatrician are justified.
Benjamin Spock
In the 50s of the last century, it was the voice of Dr. Spock that instilled in mothers the confidence that they knew for sure that they were raising their child correctly, and could even enjoy the process. The book “The Child and His Care,” published on July 14, 1946, opened a new era in the difficult science of education, and its sales volume was second only to the Bible.
Benjamin Spock offered American mothers a set of basic recommendations for caring for children: how to feed, treat, bathe, educate. The doctor argued that when treating a child one should be guided common sense, maintaining harmony between excessive tenderness and excessive severity.
- Parents are people too
As correctly noted Doctor Spock, most books on child care focus exclusively on the child, while not paying attention to the parents at all. Reading such literature, new parents are immediately faced with the idea that motherhood and fatherhood are the end, that’s it, finita la comedia. Benjamin Spock argued that there is no need to sacrifice yourself to the baby, devoting all your free time and energy to him. Ultimately, this will simply make both mother and child unhappy.
A young mother has every right to feel towards her child negative feelings, for example, to be angry with him, and has the same right not to worry later that she is supposedly a bad mother. Life after the birth of a child, according to Spock, should be rich and full, because parents are also people who have so much to do: become a successful father and mother, raise a healthy and smart baby, realize themselves professionally and not let the family hearth fade away.
- Don't be afraid to love
“A child is born to become an intelligent and kind human being. Don't be afraid to love it and enjoy it. Every child needs to be caressed, smiled at, loved and tender with him,” writes Benjamin Spock. Scientists have proven more than once that an adult needs tactile intimacy just as much as food and drink. And the child - even more so!
Modern young parents are constantly afraid to spoil their baby with physical contact, forgetting that this The best way manifestations of love. Don't be afraid to pick up your baby, caress and cradle him, fuss with him and nurse him. Only by investing your love, care, affection and honesty in your child can you get worthy results.
- Follow the feeding schedule
“The regime is necessary for the benefit of the child, on the one hand, and for the convenience of the parents, on the other. The mode saves your energy and time. Flexible feeding means keeping the number of feedings to a reasonable number at more or less specific times and stopping night feedings as soon as the baby is ready.
Otherwise, parents will be too tired to give the child more than just food. Since there is no need for a strict routine, you can first comply with the child's demands, and then gradually establish a routine that is convenient for both you and him,” Spock explained.
- Don't spoil babies
Spock advised mothers to pay attention to their babies' cries, to hold their babies in their arms, soothe them, and try to figure out what was wrong. At the same time, the pediatrician believed that carrying a baby older than three months in her arms would lead to the baby simply being spoiled: “If the mother always readily takes the child in her arms as soon as he cries, then after two months he can almost ask to be held.” all the time while he’s awake.”
If the mother continues to give in, then after a while the child will understand that his poor, exhausted mother is under his thumb, and will tyrannize her, demanding to be constantly carried in her arms.” Modern psychologists and pediatricians do not agree with this point of view. If a baby asks to be held, he needs emotional contact with his mother. And the absence of such contacts in childhood is fraught with the fact that the child will grow up withdrawn and unsure of himself.
- Let your child be himself
“Raise your children with love and you won’t have to resort to punishment!” Spock asserted. Another important way to show love to a child is to respect his wishes. If your baby doesn't want to sleep during the day, don't force him. Don't want to finish your porridge? Don't try to convince him to eat every last spoonful. Children's desires are very natural and intuitive, but reasonable desires should not be confused with banal whims.
“Don’t be afraid to comply with your child’s wishes, as long as they seem reasonable to you and do not make you his slave,” said Dr. Spock. At one time, for promoting such views, doctors were accused of condoning permissiveness: it was this, in the opinion of many pediatricians and psychologists of that time, that gave birth to a generation of people who had forgotten how to respect their elders.
Why is the venerable doctor being criticized now? For the phrase “try not to approach the child as soon as he starts crying. Give him the opportunity to calm down on his own. Sometimes a baby may cry so much that he vomits. Calmly clean up the vomit and leave the room”? In fact, Spock pursued a completely good goal: to give new parents a chance to survive in completely new conditions.